Jobs: Apple and Adobe Have ‘Grown Apart’

Ed Sutherland ()

Jobs: Apple and Adobe Have ‘Grown Apart’

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Thursday his company and Adobe have “grown apart” as he claims the Cupertino, Calif. company moves beyond the PC era into an age of mobility. In an open letter entitled “Thoughts on Flash,” the co-founder of the computer company outlined his reasons for breaking away from the traditional Web animation application.

Jobs said his objections to Flash center on six issues, including openness, reliability and security.

The Apple CEO restated his position that Flash is “100 percent proprietary.” Although Apple has released a number of proprietary products, the company has also adopted open standards, such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Adobe is critical of Apple’s decision to drop support of Flash “for leaving the past behind,” Jobs writes. The adoption of HTML5 by YouTube, Netflix and others means owners of Apple products “aren’t missing much video” and “Flash is no longer necessary” to watch video or other multimedia, he argues.

“Flash is the number one reason Macs crash,” Jobs charges. He said translating Flash applications to run on the iPhone creates “sub-standard apps.”

Jobs charged Apple would not allow its developers to “be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available.” He noted only Adobe only recently adopted Cocoa (the Mac OS X user interface), although it has been available for nearly a decade.

The charismatic Apple leader denigrated Flash as an application “created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. But the mobile era is about low-powered devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where flash falls short,” Jobs concludes.

DON'T MISS
Microsoft: HTML5 is the Web’s Future

[via AppleInsider and 9to5Mac]

11 comments »

About the author

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by .

Posted in News |

  • http://ihbs.co.uk Ben

    If you read the article, rather than articles on the article, it actually makes a lot of sense, and is a very good bit of writing and a point very well made!

  • Horselover Fat

    I wonder if this will have implications for the development of Adobe software for the Mac? (Photoshop, Creative Suite, etc….)

  • Steven

    but very true, it never struck me, but flash is never designed for touch.

  • surfkevinsurf

    Alright, I don’t know if I completely agree with Apple right now. I understand the points Jobs is making and they are valid to some extent. However, it is annoying when I pull up a site on my iPhone that has flash content and I can’t watch it. That being said, Apple has a long history of being the first “unadopters”. When the iMac was released way back in 1995-6? They caught a lot of guff for being the first ones to drop the floppy drive because they said it was old technology. We all know how that worked out. I guess only time will tell if developers continue adopt other options beside flash. I love Adobe and Apple products and I truly hope that the relationship stays strong so that I don’t lose Photoshop or something next.

  • nabil2199

    whoever thinks H.264 is open is an idiot

  • Ken

    Technically Steve never said H.264 was “open”, just a “more modern format” that’s been adopted by Blu-ray and other companies.

    Personally I agree completely with Steve on the whole thing. I’ve always felt Flash was a “necessary evil” and look forward to never having to use it again. :)

    I sincerely hope that Adobe is smart enough to realize that letting this have a negative impact on the companies decision to support Mac OS in their other products (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) is a phenomenally poor business decision, not to mention childishly spiteful.

  • Fangio

    Yeah well the BBC still uses Adobe Flash and Air for it’s iPlayer, and I don’t see them dropping that any time soon considering how long it took them to make the iPlayer compatible with Mac OS, and Linux streaming still isn’t supported.

  • Daniel

    I thought it was a well written argument and agree with the bulk of it. My only worry is that as someone who depends on several various Adobe Creative Suites applications on a daily basis, I don’t want to see my ability to use them on the Mac compromised because of such candid admissions of their deteriorating relationship.

    If Apple has plans to provide a realistic alternative, fine. I’m as upset with Adobe bloatware as anyone. But it looks like they don’t even have long term plans to continue developing desktop software. Which leaves me in the lurch if Adobe decides to go tit for tat.

    Sometimes it’s better to shut up and take the hits for the good of the team.

  • Barton Lynch

    wow, can’t believe it’s on the homepage of apple.com!

  • Thao

    These lines say it all for me:

    “We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. ”

    How can you expect anyone to support your platform, if you can’t demonstrate that your product is viable and functional? If Adobe can show me flash running on a mobile device well, I’ll feel sorry for them…and Steve J. may listen.

  • http://deoclicianocgiportfolio.wordpress.com Deocliciano Okssipin Vieira

    It is about cross-platform.
    Cross-platform sucks, only lazy developers would care.

    But the world is lazy.

    Apple will support flash if it work on phones, you can read that from steve Jobs post.